Parkinson's disease gives LSU QB coach new outlook

Of the millions watching and thousands attending the college national championship football game Monday night in New Orleans, none will have a view quite like Steve Kragthorpe.

“I’ve already promised my wife I will take a second to soak it all in around me before things get crazy,” Kragthorpe said. “Our life has been an adventure. Coaching in this game will be a little surreal.”

Certainly, part of Kragthorpe’s unique view arrives from holding the title as Louisiana State University quarterbacks coach.

What diehard college football fan wouldn’t offer a limb to sit high above the Superdome field Monday night in the LSU “coaches room” watching the Tigers take on Alabama for all the Division I marbles?

A seat not even the 46-year-old Kragthorpe could quite have dreamed of the day he and his new bride — Canyon’s Cynthia Poff — hopped in a car and drove to Corvallis, Ore., 24 hours after his graduation from West Texas State University in May of 1988.

What was the hurry?

After spending two years playing quarterback under the innovative passing mind of coach Bill Kelly at West Texas — Kragthorpe started his senior year in 1987 throwing for 1,980 yards and nine touchdowns — he was anxious to start working.

His work? Like Kennedy children and politics, like kids with the last name of Hershey and chocolate, Kragthorpe was born to be a football coach.

His dad, Dave, was the head coach at Oregon State in 1988 and Kragthorpe would start what is now a 23-year and counting coaching career as a graduate assistant.

Those who knew the curly-haired, hyper Kragthorpe as a teammate at West Texas are as surprised as Christmas coming every year he became a coach.

Amarillo attorney Tod Mayfield was the starting quarterback ahead of Kragthorpe in 1986.

“Steve not only knew all the plays, he knew what everybody else was supposed to do,” said Mayfield, who remains friends with the man he calls “Thorper” and was Kragthorpe’s guest at the first Alabama-LSU meeting two months ago. “In other words, he knew more than I did.”

Kragthorpe’s coaching road to Monday’s national title game is similar to the typical gypsy trail many coaches have bumped along. And then, it’s not like many coaches at all in dealing with health issues.

Kragthorpe has coached at eight college programs, along with a two-year stint in the NFL as quarterbacks coach with the Buffalo Bills in 2001-02.

His highest profile job as an assistant before this year was the offensive coordinator at Texas A&M from 1998 to 2000. Although, in 1996 as quarterbacks coach at Boston College his star student was a guy named Matt Hasselback, the current starting QB for the Tennessee Titans.

His highest profile coaching jobs were as the head man. First, he led Tulsa back from the dead to three bowl appearances between 2003-06, earning Western Athletic Conference coach of the year in 2003 when Tulsa ended 11-straight losing seasons and had the biggest turnaround in college football, going from 1-11 to 8-5.

Kragthorpe’s next head coaching experience with Louisville was not nearly as enlightening or fruitful. He went 15-21 in three years at Louisville and was fired in 2009.

“Oh yeah, for sure, I have been able to learn something wherever I have coached and have taken that with me here at LSU,” Kragthorpe said. “Like with Bill at West Texas. He was way before his time in the passing game. I’ve even used a couple of his plays from time to time.”

Without question, Kragthorpe is entrenched in the college football world and ranks 8th on the list of highest paid assistants in college football at $700,000 a year, according to USA Today.

LSU head coach Les Miles praised Kragthorpe, calling him “the best quarterback coach in America,” during an interview with Ivan Maisel of ESPN.com.

Said Kragthorpe: “Working with Les is unbelievable. He is such a great person and I’ve learned so much.

“This is a great place. I always wondered what the SEC was really like. It’s amazing and that’s just the talent level of the coaches.”

Now, Miles thought he would be calling Kragthorpe “offensive coordinator” until a meeting between the two before the current LSU season started.

Kragthorpe had been fighting fatigue, “like somebody had hit me over and over with a two-by-four.” This was something he hadn’t felt during those grueling 100-hour fall weeks he regularly kept as a head coach with Tulsa and Louisville.

Kragthorpe learned he was one of the 50,000 Americans diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease each year.

This news was on top of the reason Kragthorpe sat out 2010, giving up an assistant coaching job at Texas A&M to care for his wife.

“Things weren’t going well for Cynthia and I needed to step out and be there for her and my three boys,” Kragthorpe said.

Cynthia was coping with multiple sclerosis and successful surgery to correct a rare heart condition called Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome.

“She’s tougher than me,” Kragthorpe said of his wife.

The decision to have Kragthorpe switch duties from coordinator to quarterbacks coach was made before LSU’s season started and was announced in a brief news conference.

Kragthorpe is currently on a powerful medication that has slowed some of the tremors in his left hand and arm.

“It sucked,” Kragthorpe said when he first heard the news. “The hardest part was Cynthia was sick, too. And I had to go tell my three boys the news. That was pretty tough,”

The outgoing Kragthorpe saw his perspective on life changed by what he calls “a God thing,” Shortly after he learned of his condition, Kragthorpe saw a boy bound to a wheelchair because of an illness. The child had a smile on his face.

“I knew then I couldn’t feel sorry for myself,” Kragthorpe said.

Kragthorpe’s view of the national championship game Monday night will be unique because he will be wearing headphones, helping make suggestions on plays to run, while encouraging and guiding LSU quarterbacks Jarrett Lee and Jordan Jefferson through the most monumental game of their lives.

But that view wasn’t handed to Kragthorpe overnight.

No, that view was forged by a deep-rooted passion for coaching football and all the highs and lows that come with it on a road through eight different states, including that stop in West Texas.